Danstan Omari has seen enough courtrooms to know that most Kenyans are walking around breaking the law without the slightest idea they are doing it.
The lawyer, who runs his practice at Danstan Omari and Associates Advocates in Westlands, Nairobi, is not talking about robbery or fraud. He is talking about spitting on the pavement. Kissing at a bus stop. Yelling across a street market. Things that feel completely ordinary but sit squarely within the reach of Kenyan law.
He is clear from the start about what the law is actually for. ‘The law was never designed to follow people into their private lives,’ he says. ‘It exists to manage behaviour that affects other people.’
The moment what you do in public touches someone else, whether their health, their safety, or their comfort, the law has every right to step in. Everything else, what you do in your house and your private space, is yours entirely.
What many Kenyans do not realise is that this regulation happens at a very local level. Kenya has 47 counties and each one of them has its own bylaws governing everyday public behaviour.
These are not national laws debated in Parliament. They are county-level rules that speak directly to how people conduct themselves within specific boundaries.
Spitting, dressing, noise, public display of affection, food hygiene, all of it falls under these bylaws. And Mr Omari says most Kenyans have never heard of them.
‘That ignorance is exactly why enforcement fails,’ he says, ‘and why corruption thrives in its place.’
He starts with something as basic as spitting. The law does not regulate it because it is unpleasant to watch. It regulates it because the person spitting might be carrying a disease that can spread to every person who walks past that spot.
‘If you must spit,’ Mr. Omari explains, ‘the law requires that you cover your mouth or use a handkerchief.’ It is not about manners. It is about the person walking behind you who has no idea what they are about to step into.
Noise follows the same reasoning. People assume that screaming or yelling in a public space is harmless, just someone being loud. But he explains that the streets of any Kenyan town are full of people carrying invisible burdens, trauma survivors, people with medical conditions, people with severe anxiety. ‘Sudden loud noise can trigger panic,’ he says.
‘It can cause stampedes. It can endanger lives.’ The law is not silencing anyone. It is protecting the people who share that space with you.
Public displays of affection are another area on the spot where people often feel the law is overstepping. Mr Omari disagrees. ‘The law does not regulate who you love or how you love them,’ he says.
‘It regulates where.’ A couple kissing or being physically intimate in a shared public space is surrounded by children, elderly people, and strangers who have not agreed to be part of that moment. The space belongs to everyone, and that changes what is acceptable within it.
Dressing is perhaps the most argued point. People feel their clothing is entirely their own business, and he does not completely disagree. But he explains that the law uses a specific standard to decide when dressing becomes a public matter.
‘The measure is the ordinary person on the street,’ he says. ‘If the majority of ordinary people would find your dressing offensive or harmful to public order, the law can act.’ It is not about one person’s opinion. It is about the shared experience of a community moving through the same space.
Now comes the part most Kenyans would find shocking. When asked what the actual penalties are for breaking these bylaws, the answer is almost embarrassingly small. ‘The minimum fine is Sh50,’ he says, ‘and the maximum is Sh100.’ These are petty offences and they are not handled anywhere near a criminal court. County courts and city courts deal with them specifically.
‘For someone who cannot afford to pay, the consequence is jail time of between one and seven days, or a community service order requiring them to report and clean public premises until the penalty is considered served.’
The catch, Mr Omari explains, is that those fines have not been reviewed since the 1970s. And because most Kenyans have no idea the fines are that law, Kanjo enforcement officers have made a business out of that ignorance.
‘Someone gets arrested for kissing on the street,’ Mr Omari says, ‘and they panic. They do not know the fine is Sh50, so they negotiate and end up paying a few thousand shillings or more just to be released.’ He calls it exactly what it is. Corruption. And it works because the public has never been told what the law actually says.
He is also candid about the Kanjo officers themselves. Many of them, he says, were employed for their physical presence and their ability to be forceful, not for their understanding of the law. Some of them do not know the fines any better than the people they are arresting. ‘When someone who actually knows the law stands their ground,’ he says, ‘the officers walk away. Because the case is not worth pursuing.’
When the conversation moves to sexual offences, the tone shifts entirely. ‘This is no longer the territory of a Sh50 fines. Sexual harassment carries a fine of over Sh20,000 and a prison sentence of 20 years and above. Rape is between 25 years and life imprisonment. Indecent assault, which covers any unwanted touching of another person’s body, carries a sentence of around 15 years.’ Explains Mr Omari.
And for anyone convicted of a sexual offence, the consequences follow them permanently. They are entered into a register that bars them from receiving a certificate of good conduct and from obtaining a visa to travel anywhere. ‘The record is permanent,’ says Mr Omari.
Assault and wife battery sit in the same serious category. The law does not soften because the victim is a spouse. ‘Causing grievous bodily harm to anyone, a wife, a child, a workmate, can carry a sentence up to life imprisonment,’ he says. ‘The defence that this is your wife carries absolutely no weight in law.’
But laws alone, he argues, are not the answer. Kenya does not need more legislation targeting offenders. What it needs is a legal framework that holds officials accountable when they look the other way. ‘A chief who ignores a rape report, a police officer who throws a domestic violence case aside, a judge who fails to protect, none of them face any legal consequence for that failure,’ says Mr. Omari.
And until that changes, he believes nothing else will. ‘Until accountability reaches the enforcers,’ he says, ‘nothing changes on the ground.’